Octavia was glad for the forced exile of the shower. It gave her time to think while Alex waited in the next room. It was difficult not to think of him as her executioner, even when he'd snuck in to brush his teeth at the sink, only a few feet from the thin plastic curtain of the shower.
He had good intentions, of course; he always did. He'd intended to let her go when they first found her in Victor's apartment, and he'd intended to keep her safe from Dominic not that long ago, and all of that had gone just fine. So she peeked out the edge of the curtain to watch him rinse the toothbrush and then splash some water on his face, wearing only his dress slacks, and tried to let the cold nothingness that had been enveloping her since Interrogation drown what feelings she'd formed for him.
Once Alex was gone, Octavia took her time drying off, gently pressing her towel around the tender spots. She wondered if she would get to shower the day he killed her. It seemed undignified, dying the way a person first woke up. She didn't want to be remembered that way.
A soft knock at the door.
"I pulled an outfit for you, if that's okay," Alex said. He'd nudged the door no more than an inch, and when she came over to see him, he wouldn't look at her. They'd gone back to acquaintances, just like that. He was fully dressed by then, though his hair was loose and disheveled, and he paid an unnecessary amount of attention to a spot on the far wall beyond her shoulder.
"Of course," she replied. "Thank you." Octavia opened the door all the way. Her cuts had puckered and grown tight from the heat, but she needed to feel closer to him. He offered the small bundle of clothes without looking, and she set them on the far counter.
Alex began to leave.
"Hey," she said. He returned at that same awkward angle that made it look like he'd forgotten how to make eye contact. "Look at me."
He didn't want to. When he did, his eyes were red-rimmed and wounded.
Octavia slid her hands inside his coat, embracing him. She ignored the spots where she was still damp and stuck to him, or other spots that stung and ached. She locked her hands behind him and squeezed, sinking inside of his coat, pretending to be just another layer of him. Her unwilling executioner. Alex hugged back fiercely. She couldn't tell if the grip on her hair was pulling her closer or away; his whole body tensed, grappling with the problem of her closeness.
"I won't." It came out a choked sob. "I wouldn't."
"I know," she said. But she'd whispered it into the hard little buttons of his shirt, and wasn't sure if he'd even heard.
#
When she was dressed, Octavia led Alex down the long stretch of hallway to the cafeteria. She admired the concrete block walls with their spray-painted signs and the maze of pipes above her head. It had all started to feel like home. Even the men who lingered or passed in the hallway no longer made her nervous. Octavia was ready to give up and let nature in, like a collapsed bridge or an abandoned building. She wanted to crumble apart and turn into dust; a time-lapsed video in which her rubble made way for a fresh carpet of spring grass. She reached out, pinky finger hooking Alex's hand and taking it in her own. She couldn't tell him how she felt. It went against all of her survival instincts.
It was no secret that humanity wanted to die about as much as it wanted to live: it was the reason for junk food, for drinking too much, for cheating on a spouse or driving like a maniac. And it wasn't always thrill-seeking or denial. Octavia had spent many a night attached to Victor's pull-out couch feeling depressed and vulnerable. For her, wanting to die was sometimes a brutal, shameful truth.
They reached the swinging doors of the cafeteria and she let loose his hand. Even though she had begun to accept her fate, she didn't want to make things more difficult for Alex. As it turned out, she was right to let go: Victor had joined Billy and his fellow lifers at the head table. Steam rose from the pans on the food line, filling the whole room with the stink of bacon and eggs.
Alex said, "I'll grab some food if you want to take a seat." The skin on his neck turned red in blotches as he reluctantly joined the line, shuffling along with plastic trays. There were still many men at other tables that she'd seen in passing but never met, and few of them took notice of her anymore. She recognized Raul in line next to Alex, then caught sight of Nick at a table adjacent to the lifers. If she sat there, Victor could see past the open seat next to Billy and watch her. Nick gave her a hesitant wave.
Octavia was walking toward him when she made an abrupt turn, climbing onto the bench beside Billy. It thrilled her to do it. Victor's eyes went wide as he set his fork down, an uneaten bite of egg still steaming on it.
"Baby girl," Billy said in his husky voice.
Octavia ignored him. "Tell me why," she commanded. Victor furrowed his brow. "Why did you take this job?"
It was his turn to be uncomfortable. He turned to his table mates, then back to her. "We don't need to talk about this here."
"There are so many things I never asked. The ring at the end of your necklace – I don't know who it belongs to and I've wondered for what feels like forever. Is it your mother's? It is, isn't it?"
"This isn't the time—" he began.
"But that's the thing: there is no more time. I want to understand. I want to know that you wear your mother's wedding ring around your neck because your father wanted to throw it out after she left, but you couldn't bear to part with it. You...dug it out of the garbage disposal. Give me something."
Victor shot out of his seat, well aware of the looks he received from his companions. He stomped to the coffee urns, where he busied himself filling a Styrofoam cup, and Octavia followed. "No one bothers you anymore, and this is how you thank me," he muttered.
"Why, Victor? You had a sport that you loved. I could be asking why you took me in the first place. Why, out of any girl you might have seen at a grocery store or a shopping mall, you picked me. It's a fair question. You ruined my life."
There was a crash at the other end of the line, followed by a commotion. A pan of breakfast sausage had overturned and food went rolling in every direction. Raul winced at what looked like a painful grease splatter now along his forearm and shirt. At the center of it all, Alex was shouting. "She's not even up here, so I don't give a shit if you're not supposed to serve her. I'm asking you for two plates and your job is to make them!" Redness had suffused his neck and face, and his whole body tensed for a fight. The men around him cautiously backed away as Nick scrambled to the scene. He said something into Alex's ear while patting his back, coaxing him to sit at his table and relax. While Nick and the kitchen staff mopped up the mess, Alex sat with his back to her, shoulders rising and falling.
"He's less confident today," Victor said, smirking.
"Don't change the subject."
He took a swig of his black coffee. "I know you think you're righting some kind of wrong, coming in here and embarrassing me, but the job was for you. All of it."
"For me?" she asked.
"How else was I going to pay for that ring, for a wedding? And then we were going to need a house – it never ends with women. I was thinking about our future. Fighting wasn't going to pay for all that."
"First of all, I never even wanted..." she began, then chastised herself. She was making way for the new spring grass. "You could have done anything, but you chose this."
"The point is, I did it for us. Just like this thing with Dominic. And when the time is right I'll need the strongest of these men on my side, the winners." He drank more of the coffee and refilled it from the shuttle on the table. "Wait. Why would the kitchen refuse to serve you?"
The temptation to use him like an indiscriminate weapon was strong, even when she knew how it ended. She could feel it under her clothes. But she wondered what opportunities would present themselves when Victor had carried out his own plan for Dominic. She had been so quick to accept her fate, blind to the fact that it was only one path of many that branched from Victor's chaos and spiraled in all directions.
"Dominic is...getting rid of me," Octavia said carefully. She watched layers of grief pass over his face in return: surprise, guilt, anger. She leaned in, the scratches on her stomach burning with the pull. "So I want you to hurry."
Finally, a reaction from Victor that she hadn't predicted. A complete loss for words. He swallowed, the knot at his throat visibly rising and falling. "I will," he managed. "I'll hurry. Don't tell your friends over there. If they warn Dominic, I won't have access to him."
"What makes you think they're just friends?"
Victor's gaze passed up and down her front. "I know it. Don't mess this up, cariña."
She didn't have the nerve to murder Dominic, though; she'd long since discovered that in the battle of fight versus flight, she was a runner all the way. "I won't," she replied.
He stalked back to his table, where Billy had already begun taunting him about his necklace.